9:30 Club Used to Be Duke Ellington's in 1949

The 9:30 Club, the esteemed rock club that Rolling Stone magazine recently named the best big room in America, has a musical past dating way back before the building's move to 815 V Street in 1996. This music history even goes back beyond it's former life as WUST Music Hall, from which the giant radio tower remains. In 1948 and 1949 jazz legend Duke Ellington owned a club in that building called, fittingly, Duke Ellington's. The building had only finished construction a few years prior and the exterior looks remarkably similar today. Thanks to the 9:30 Club staff for this old photograph.